Dr. Anthony Fauci is no longer getting the honor of his own exhibit at the National Institutes of Health museum.
Thanks to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the nearly $170,000 project was nixed as millions of dollars worth of Health and Human Services contracts were canceled.
‘Can you believe your taxpayer dollars were being spent on a Fauci exhibit?’ Musk lamented on his social media website X on Monday morning.
The allocated costs would be associated with building, unveiling and maintaining an exhibit in the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland that would likely focus on Fauci’s decades-long career in public health.
This comes just after President Donald Trump terminated the doctor’s taxpayer-funded security detail.
‘I think you know, when you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off, and you know, you can’t have them forever,’ Trump told reporters days after being sworn back into office for a second term.
‘So I think it’s very standard,’ he added. ‘If it was for somebody else you wouldn’t be asking the question.’
Elon Musk’s DOGE shut down a $170,000 contract for creation of an exhibit to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the NIH Museum
Details about the planned exhibit were scarce, but it would likely focus on Fauci’s long career in the federal government
Since then, Fauci – the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – hired a private security firm for his own protection.
The NIH doctor began his federal government career in 1968 and ended in December 2022 embroiled in controversy after he advised both Presidents Trump and Joe Biden through the onset and conclusion of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last week, DOGE announced that it canceled 62 HHS contracts, which amounted to $182 million for ‘entirely for administrative expenses.’
Musk insisted that none of his cuts ‘touched any healthcare programs.’
The cuts included stopping the project for Fauci’s museum exhibit.
While Fauci was by Trump’s side at the start of COVID-19, his legacy was quickly marred by unpopular pandemic restrictions he helped implement, including extended social distancing, mask wearing and compulsory vaccine mandates that led to thousands of members of the military being forcibly discharged and other federal workers being fired.
Musk announced that $182 million in Health and Human Services contracts were canceled last week – including the project for the Fauci exhibit
The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland will no longer hold a space for an exhibit honoring Fauci’s decades-long contributions to HHS and his advisory of Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the COVID-19 pandemic
He also was the one who recommended that schools would remain closed well past when many felt it was necessary, leading to years of underdevelopment in primary-school-aged kids.
Upon retirement it was reported that Fauci would make $414,000 in his first year not working, which is more than the $400,000 yearly salary paid to the President of the United States.
This also led to outcry from those who particularly take issue with his institute funding gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab from which COVID-19 was leaked.
On his way out of office, President Biden gave Fauci a preemptive pardon out of concern that Trump’s administration would target the 84-year-old retired doctor for criminal prosecution.
